Legally Blonde- Legally Brunette? Palin and Popular Culture

Legally Brunette?

Taking a brief break from Nanowrimo with some thoughts re the mid-term election and the seeming ascendency of Sarah Palin. (I say, seeming ascendency because the failure of Palin-picks, Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharron Angle in Nevada, and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, would indicate some question about Palin’s influence.)

Commentators have given all kinds of reasons for the “tsunami” of Republican/Tea Party victories: Obama’s failure to communicate, resistance to health care legislation, a still-faltering economy.

To me, part of the appeal of Palin and certain Republicans, and the corresponding disaffection from Obama, comes from the popularity of a “Legally Blonde” approach to the world; the triumph of the cutesy outsider over the elitist professorial.

Now I liked Legally Blonde as much as the next person. (As an unlikely blonde female matriculant at an Ivy League law school, who roomed with a top-notch though even more unlikely blonde female matriculant, I probably liked the movie even more than the next person.)

But the movie’s immediate lessons that (i) a thorough knowledge of hair care, (ii) shoes, and (iii) sassy toe-tapping combined with (iv) a fervant belief in one’s client/cause are sure tools not only to success but to justice should not, in my view, be taken as perfect paradigms for modern governance.

Of course, good hair helps everything. (I say this as a person who does not have it. Thankfully, unlike certain politicians, a/k/a/ John Edwards, I don’t obsess over it. )

But there is a big tendency in popular culture to label any deliberate thoughtfulness, balancing and expertise, as narcissim, obfuscation, and venal elitism. Such qualities are only truly acceptable in the fictional world if they are coupled with a great body or a hyperbolic ability to inflict corner-cutting violence; see e.g. Lizbeth Salander, Bones, Robert Downey as Sherlock Holmes, any of a whole host of movies I’ve not actually seen (due to my dislike of violence.)

To be fair to “Legally Blonde”, the movie does show Belle balancing big books on her stairmaster, but what ultimately saves the day is her knowledge of permanent waves and, oh yes, Pradas.